CNN Slashes School Shooting Stats Claim By 80 Percent

CNN has drastically revised a claim it made, which was based on a graphical map from a pro-gun control group, which purportedly showed that 74 school shootings have occurred in the U.S. since the Sandy Hook massacre in Dec. 2012.

The news outlet circulated the graphical map, which came from the group Everytown for Gun Safety, after a shooting that occurred Tuesday at a high school in Oregon which left two dead, including the 15 year-old gunman.

Everytown for Gun Safety, which is backed by former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, headlined their graphic “School Shootings in America Since Sandy Hook,” suggesting that the shootings it listed had a link of some kind to Sandy Hook — in which Adam Lanza killed 26 people at an elementary school.

CNN and various other media outlets used the graphic in news segments.

“So on Wednesday, CNN took a closer look at the list, delving into the circumstances of each incident Everytown included,” reads CNN’s report.

It acknowledged that many of the shootings listed by Everytown did not fit the profile of a Sandy Hook-type shooting, in which the attacks are seemingly random.

“CNN determined that 15 of the incidents Everytown included were situations similar to the violence in Oregon – a minor or adult actively shooting inside or near a school,” said CNN.

Charles Johnson, a freelance journalist, first began looking into the shooting incidents cited by Everytown for Gun Safety. After cross-referencing all of the incidents listed by Everytown with local news reports, he claimed that only seven of the 74 shootings were what he would consider classical cases of school shootings similar to the one at Sandy Hook or Tuesday’s incident in Oregon.